DECEMBER FESTIVALS

December is a rather peaceful month in the festivals' calendar, there is really not that many of them organized near the Christmas and New Year's time. Polish documentaries will appear on the screens at four film festivals, there will be however a rather big number of them representing our cinema, altogether the audience of these festivals will be able to see more than 30 films.

The festival, which will be the host of the biggest number of Polish films in December is Festival dei Popoli taking place in Florence. Marcin Bortkiewicz has been invited to take part in the competition with his latest documentary "Left Side of the Face". In the non-competitive section Far from Utopia, dedicated to the difficult living conditions in different places of the world, the film "Abu Haraz" by Maciej Drygas will be shown.

In addition to that, the organizers of the festival decided to honor Marcel and Paweł Łoziński by including in the programme a retrospective of their films titled "Father&Son: A Journey into Cinema". In this section the viewers can find more than 30 films, including the commonly known and awarded at film festivals, like "89mm from Europe" or "Chemo", as well as the less popular ones. You can find more information here.

The organizers of the French Tous Courts Short Film Festival also made room in this year's edition for an overview of Polish cinema. In keeping with the festival's profile, they focused on the short film productions. Three documentaries were included in the Polish programme: "Mother" by Jakub Piątek, "Six Weeks" by Marcin Janos Krawczyk and "Written in Ink" by Marcin Rath. Paweł Ziemilski's film "Rogalik", already acknowledged at many festivals, is going to fight for the awards in the competition.

Eight Polish titles will have a chance to win the trophies in Iran. The documentary film competition Cinema Verite will host the screenings of "Loneliness of Sound" by Jacek Piotr Bławut, "Abu Haraz" by Maciej Drygas, "My House Without Me" by Magdalena Szymków, "Mother 24/7" by Marcin Janos Krawczyk, Paweł Ziemilski's "Rogalik", "Father and Son" directed by Paweł Łoziński, Tomasz Wolski's "The Palace" and "Yorzeit" by Zuzanna Solakiewicz.

Finally, we can go back to Poland where between 6 and 12 December the Watch Docs International Film Festival - Human Rights in Film is going to take place. Four Polish documentaries will be presented in the non-competitive section of the festival. These are: "Everything Is Possible" by Lidia Duda, "Our Curse" by Tomasz Śliwiński, "When I Am a Bird" by Monika Pawluczuk and "Mother 24/7" by Marcin Janos Krawczyk.